Iran's Missiles Becoming More Advanced Thanks to China, Western Intelligence Says
Accuracy in Iranian missile strikes against Israel and US military facilities in the Middle East has reportedly increased significantly. Intelligence experts suspect this improvement may have resulted from Iran potentially gaining access to China’s BeiDou Navigation Satellite System.
Alain Juillet, former director of French foreign intelligence, stated that Iran likely obtained access to China’s BeiDou Navigation Satellite System. Juillet made this statement during the Tocsin Podcast, noting that Iran’s improved missile accuracy represented one of the major surprises in the recent conflict with Israel.
“One of the surprises in this war is that Iranian missiles are more accurate compared to the conflict that occurred eight months ago, which has raised many questions about the missile guidance system,” Juillet said, as reported by Al Jazeera on 13 March 2026.
The United States possesses the capability to disrupt or block access to its own Global Positioning System (GPS), which was previously used by Iranian military forces. However, the US has limited means to jam China’s BeiDou system should Iran actually be using it.
China launched the latest version of its satellite navigation system in 2020, claiming it can rival GPS. President Xi Jinping officially inaugurated the system during a ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing in July 2020.
China began developing its own satellite navigation system after the Third Taiwan Strait Crisis, concerned that Washington could restrict GPS access in the future. According to the official BeiDou website, the system aims to serve the world and benefit humanity.
The system uses more satellites than other navigation systems. According to AJ Labs data, the US GPS has 24 satellites, whilst BeiDou uses 45 satellites. Two other global navigation systems are Russia’s GLONASS and the European Union’s Galileo, each with 24 satellites.
The BeiDou system consists of three major segments: space, ground, and user. The ground segment includes various stations such as the main control centre, time synchronisation and uplink stations, monitoring stations, and network operations and management facilities. Meanwhile, the user segment comprises various products and services, including chips, modules, antennas, terminals, application systems, and navigation-based services.
Like other satellite navigation systems, BeiDou works by transmitting time signals from satellites to receivers on the ground or in vehicles. By measuring the time required for signals from several satellites to reach the receiver, the system can calculate geographic position with precision.
Military and political analyst Elijah Magnier, based in Brussels, said accuracy depends on the service used. “Open civilian signals typically provide accuracy of about five to ten metres, whilst restricted services for authorised users can provide significantly higher precision,” Magnier said.
Iran has not confirmed this report. Furthermore, it remains unclear whether switching satellite navigation systems for military operations could be accomplished comprehensively in a short timeframe since the conflict with Israel began in June of the previous year.
Following that conflict, Iran’s Ministry of Information and Communications Technology stated that the country uses all available capacity in the world and does not depend on a single technology source.
However, Juillet told Tocsin that switching to China’s BeiDou system represents a realistic explanation for the increased accuracy of Iranian strikes. “There are discussions about replacing the GPS system with the Chinese system, which explains the precision of Iranian missiles. Important targets have been successfully struck,” he concluded.